Adventuring proficiency would cover all forms of climbing that are short of Mountaineering or scaling sheer surfaces. For exampe, climbing up a rope. A character would climb at their climbing movement rate.

The "120' per turn" movement rate must rank up there as one of the most misunderstood elements of D&D since hit points. The human movement rate of 120' per turn is quite realistic in the context of *exploration*.

You can empirically verify this. Go to a store with interesting merchandise (B&N, for instance). Monitor your speed of movement as you walk through the store. Given a 40' x 40' store, with a perimeter of 120', it will take at least 10 minutes. If shopping doesn't convince you, consider your rate of movement through a museum or art gallery, etc. That's exploration speed.

If the adventurers are crossing through areas they have already traversed, not concerned with noise or traps, and aren't mapping, they shouldn't be moving at exploration speed.

The rules state "Thieves climb at ¼ their standard combat movement rate." While correct insofar as combat movement, the rule seems to imply that combat movement is the only available movement when climbing, which is not the intent.

Climbing speed is intended to be at 25% of normal movement rate, whatever movement is being engaged in. A moment's reflection will reveal why this must be so; obviously, there must be some rate at which a thief climbs if he is fighting with 1 hand or foot, and another rate if he's climbing all-out, and a third rate if he's cautiously climbing a long distance, taking care to be relatively quiet and probing along the way.

For an unarmored human, the combat movement rate is 40' per round in indoors and 40 yards per round outdoors. The running/charging movement rate is 120' per round indoors and 120 yards per round outdoors.

A thief therefore moves 10' per round indoors if he's "combat climbing" and 30' per round indoors if he's "running up the walls" (e.g. climbing to the exclusion of all other activities).

A thief who is "climbing all out" can move 30' per round indoors and 30 yards per round outdoors. That seems fast! But it's not implausible. In a recent Rockmaster World Championship, the world champion climbed a 25 meter rock wall in 6.3 seconds. That works out to 4 meters per second for a master climb. 4 meters per second translates to 43 yards per 10-second combat round.

Meanwhile, 1.53 meters per second on a climbing wall was (according to sources I consulted) a decent rate for a good climber. 1.53 meters per second is 1.67 yards per second or 17 yards per 10-second combat round. If you average these two values, you get (17 yards/round + 43 yards/round = 60 yards/round //2 = ) 30 yards per combat round, which is what ACKS assigns to a thief climbing outdoors.

In a dungeon, where the walls are likely smoother and wetter than an outdoor rock-face, the climbing rate will be much less. And a character who is combat climbing will obviously be much less than that.

Related topics:

The world record for swimming is 5.34 mph for 100 meters; or 26.6 yards per 10 seconds. For long distances, it is about 3 mph. ACKS movement rates for all-out swimming (120y/round / 4 = 30 yards per combat round) are therefore world-class.

The world record for running is 34 feet per second, or 113 yards per combat round. ACKS (and D&Ds) running/charging movement rate outdoors is therefore faster than today's fastest humans.

I wouldn't let the fact that ACKS assumes peak 21st century human-performance levesl for adventurers bother you, though. The book Manthropology does a brilliant (and depressing) job showing that in virtually every area of human physique, modern humans are slower and weaker than our ancestors raised under more primitive conditions. Olympic rowers cannot achieve galley speeds routinely achieved by Greek rowers. Olympic sprinters in high-tech shoes on rubber tracks cannot achieve running speeds of hunter-gathers racing barefoot in the mud. Great book.

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What People Are Saying!

“Adventurer Conqueror King adds a new wing to the Old School with its epic-scale world construction rules, which help the Judge develop an entire setting, logically and organically, in the sandbox spirit of the hobby's earliest campaigns.”

— Allen Varney

“This is what a rationalised 21st century dungeoncrawling RPG can look like: enough old school aspects to appeal to grognards, but with enough mechanical crunch to appeal to new(er) school players. The systems maths is robust enough that it doesn't fall to pieces if you breathe on it, but simple enough that you only need to do simple-addition-up-to-20 in play. And we did it crowdfunded and with substantiative fan base interaction and customer feedback.”

“It makes good on D&D's largely unfulfilled promise to take characters from lowly insignificance to the heights of power. There are rules for building castles, establishing and ruling domains (as well as wizard's sanctums and thieves guilds), and trading -- just about anything a high-level, power-hungry fantasy character might be interested in pursuing. Adventurer, Conqueror, King is a very cleverly designed game whose rules are quite compatible with most retro-clones, particularly Labyrinth Lord, making it extremely valuable to any player or referee looking to add any of its rules to their existing campaigns. This is good stuff and well worth a look.”

“I've been running this game for months now using an open world sandbox game, similar to Ben Robbins' West Marches game, and it's downright amazing. Love the comprehensive rules for everything economic and the B/X framework with layered extras, like proficiencies and special maneuvers (disarm, wrestling, etc.). If you're at all into D&D, I would check this out.”

“What does this offer that the OSR books and rules already in your collection don't? Strongholds, domains, and even mercantile ventures are addressed. Yes, your character may just outgrow the dungeon life. If you play in any fantasy type RPG and are interested in building your own campaign, many of the tools are here.”

“The Player's Companion extends the core rules by adding a series of new classes, the dwarven machinist and spelunker, the elven ranger, and some human classes - mystic (monk), shaman (druid), and priestess. I'll come out and say it though, the thing that got me fired up with the book-love was the extensive list of templates. (I think they claim there are 144 of them). An ACKS template is basically some pre-selected options that speeds up character generation and gives the character a bit of early flavor. ACKS supports the old school roll-and-go - it's got basic 3d6 in order for abilities and simple classes, like classic D&D. The templates take it the rest of the way, by adding a preconfigured set of starting equipment, starting money, and suggested proficiency selections.”